My Darkest Prayer

PROLOGUE

I could see the headlights cut through the dark and the mist enveloping the cemetery. I knew Skunk was driving slow and easy because the lane was filled with potholes and ruts. The Gethsemane Baptist Church is located on the other side of the county near the North River. Digging a grave behind that church is like digging a well. Many years before I was even a gleam in my father’s eye the church elders purchased a field near a grove of twisted mulberry trees. The branches looked like dancing skeletons as they were illuminated by the headlights. I was standing near a freshly dug grave covered by two large pieces of plywood. I leaned on my short camping shovel like it was a cane. A folding stepladder lay at my feet.

Skunk pulled up and stopped his car so that his trunk was lined up with the edge of the grave. He got out and I heard his keys jangle as he unlocked the trunk. I expected to be assaulted by the stench, but we had sealed up the body well with duct tape and a thick tarp. We flipped the plywood over and exposed the gaping maw of the grave. Tomorrow the gravediggers would drop a 2,100-pound concrete vault in this hole. A few hours later a 280-pound casket would be lowered in the vault and the whole thing would be covered with about 100 pounds of dirt. The edges would be filled in and tamped down and then the gravediggers would move on to their next job. Only Skunk and I would know this was the final resting place for two dead souls. There was a hot greasy film in my throat like I had drunk shots of whiskey mixed with gasoline. My mouth was rapidly filling with spit. Skunk turned and stared at me.

“You all right, hoss?” he said. I gripped the shovel tight.

What I wanted to say was that I didn’t feel all right. I didn’t think I would ever feel all right again.

“Yeah, I’m good. Let’s get it done,” I said.

CHAPTER ONE

I handle the bodies.

That’s what I say when people ask me what I do for a living. I find that gets one of two responses. They drift away to the other side of the room and give me a sideways glance the rest of the night or they let out a nervous laugh and move the conversation in another, less macabre direction. I could always say I work at a funeral home, but where’s the fun in that?

Every once in a while, when I was in the Corps, someone would see me at Starbucks or that modern mecca Walmart in my utility uniform. Sometimes they’d catch me in my dress blues after a military ball just trying to grab something before heading back to the base. They would walk up to me and say, “Thank you for your service.” I’d mumble something like “No, thank you for your support,” or some other pithy rejoinder, and they would wander away with a nice, satisfied look on their faces. Sometimes what I wanted to say was “I took care of the bodies. The bodies with the legs blown off or the hands shredded. The bodies full of ball bearings and nails and whatever some kid could find to build his IED. I loaded the bodies up and dragged them back to the base, then went back out on another patrol and prayed to a God that seemed to be only half listening that today wasn’t the day that someone would have to take care of my body.”

But I don’t think that would have given them the same warm and fuzzy feeling.

Now I take care of the bodies at the Walter T. Blackmon Funeral Home in Queen County, Virginia. Today, the body I was taking care of was Mrs. Jeatha Tolliver from Mathews, the next county over. Momma J, as she was known throughout the community, was a deaconess and church elder who dropped dead at seventy-eight while she was in the middle of berating her bingo neighbor for moving her lucky Jesus statue. I’m sure she would have ended the diatribe with “Bless your heart,” which is Southern for “Fuck you, bitch,” if she hadn’t expired.

I was standing at the back of the funeral home chapel while Rev. Duke Halston yelled into the microphone about Hell and damnation. The crowd shifted in their seats like they could feel the flames licking at their backsides. Duke had a bone-anchored hearing aid sitting on the back of his head like a mini satellite dish. He yelled when he was talking to you after the sermon. He yelled when he was in the supermarket. I think he lost the volume control years ago. Once he called for the undertakers to take over the service, my cousin Walter, his fellow funeral director Curtis Sampson, funeral assistant Daniel Thomas, and I would walk up to the casket and ferry the body along like four black-suited Charons. My suit didn’t fit me quite right. It seemed to be cut and sewn at awkward angles. The knot in my tie kept trying to travel left or right in advance of unraveling. That’s what I got for buying my formal wear from a thrift store.

“Now we, uh, turn over the, uh, services, uh, back to the, uh, hands of the, uh, undertakers,” Reverend Duke stammered. Walter nodded at me, and we began to make our way down the center aisle of the chapel. Despite the air conditioner running full blast, the air was stale and stifling. The flap of the handheld fans reminded me of a flock of buzzards taking off after a full meal of warm carrion. We directed the stoic pallbearers to stand just outside the chapel door, three on one side and three on the other, as we transported Momma J for her final car ride. The pallbearers, her grandsons, apparently couldn’t be bothered to wear suits for their grandmother’s funeral. Some were wearing untucked dress shirts; some were wearing basketball jerseys and T-shirts emblazoned with Momma J’s face. I’m sure Momma J was looking down with pride as the cast of a low-budget hip-hop video loaded her into our hearse. As Daniel began herding the crowd to the door so we could head to the cemetery, Walter motioned for me. My cousin was a plump chocolate drop of a man whose caramel-colored forehead seemed to be perpetually sweaty. He hung on to the Jheri curl flattop with a tenacity that would have impressed Javert. His black suit was more expensive than mine but each button on his coat seemed to be screaming for help.

“Nate, you drive the flower van. I’m gonna get Curtis to drive the hearse. Hopefully, we’ll lose some people on our way to the cemetery, and we can get back here by four. I’m so hungry I’m seeing bowlegged biscuits going down molasses lane,” Walter said. His face was pinched into a minor scowl. My cousin loved three things: his wife, his money, and his food. I could tell he had already calculated the time it would take to arrive at the cemetery, put Momma J in the ground, and get back to the office in time to catch the dinner special at Nick’s restaurant. Before I could respond, we heard raised voices and shouts from just outside the chapel doors.

I slipped past Walter. Momma J’s son Carter and his soon-to-be ex-wife, a woman by the unfortunate name of La’Unique, were arguing near the hearse. I saw some people holding up their cell phones.

I also saw some folks trying to separate them. These must have been the family members who still believed in respecting the dead. A lithe figure slipped through the crowd. I saw something metallic in his hand. It caught the last light of the setting sun and glittered for just an instant.

I pushed forward and grabbed the thin man’s arm as he raised it behind Carter’s head. He was holding the ball end of a trailer hitch. His tiny ratlike eyes appraised me with a mix of shock and anger. Carter turned.

“La’Unique, see your man gonna hit me in the back like a punk bitch? And this who you left me for? Fuck you and him!” he yelled. The man tried to twist out of my grip, but my hand was bigger than his whole arm. He turned his head and tried to bite the inside of my forearm. I kicked the side of his left knee with my right foot, and he dropped like he was about to propose. It was a love tap really. I didn’t want to break his leg. I twisted his wrist counterclockwise and plucked the trailer hitch out of his hand.

“Everyone, please make your way to your vehicles,” I said. I let my voice go as loud and as deep as I could. I must have been louder than I thought, or maybe seeing me disarm Ratboy calmed the crowd, because most of them complied. After Carter got in his truck, I let go of Ratboy’s arm. I gave him back his trailer hitch.

“Go get in your car, man,” I said. If looks could kill, I would have been on the embalming table that instant. He limped backward, keeping his eyes on me the whole time.

“I’m a see you again, playa,” he said. I shrugged in my ill-fitting suit and walked back inside the building. I had just embarrassed him in front of his woman. If he hadn’t threatened me, I would have been disappointed. Walter was waiting for me.

“Fools and flies both I do despise, but the more I know of fools, the more I like flies,” he said with a grin. I smiled back. A good sense of humor was one of the requirements of working in the funeral business.

“Hopefully, there won’t be any more theatrics at the graveside,” I said.

“Yeah, I hope not. We just gotta get through Trudy Wise going full Pentecostal at the grave and doing the holy worm across the cemetery. I really can’t fool around out there now. Just got a call from the ladies at Reverend Watkins’s church. They finally got hold of his daughter. I guess I’m gonna have to get Gloria to bring me some dinner,” Walter said as we made our way to the front door. His shoulders slumped noticeably.

Rev. Esau Watkins had been the pastor of New Hope Baptist Church over in Mathews County. About two weeks ago he had been found dead in his house. Sheriff Laurent and his crew were being tight-lipped about the details, but the local rumor mill was whispering suicide. Reverend Watkins was a widower with no brothers or sisters. His only daughter had left town a few years after I had entered the Marines. No one had heard from her since. I couldn’t say I blamed her.

Rev. Esau Watkins had formerly been known as E-Money Watkins. He was a local thief, drug dealer, and sometimes illegal pawnbroker. He had owned a barbershop down in the lower end of Queen County. At that time, it was the only Black barbershop on this side of the Coleman Bridge. I could remember going in there as a kid with my dad. I could still see the eyes of the men in the shop appraising my father as we sat and waited for my turn in the chair. The bathroom was behind a gaudy beaded curtain. Just outside the bathroom door, you could see VCRs and televisions and anything else of value that people would bring to E-Money in exchange for a few dollars for the electric bill or to pay for school clothes or to buy a rock for their shiny new crack pipe. I remember Watkins eyeballing my dad when he helped me into the barber chair. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized they were envious of Dad because he was a white man who had married one of the prettier Black women in the county.

Sometime during my time with the Corps, Esau Watkins found religion. By the time I came home, New Hope Baptist Church was the biggest church on this side of the James River. The week my parents were killed, New Hope had just broken ground on a new sanctuary three times bigger than the first one. People in the county, Black and white, were shocked and a bit aghast when Reverend Watkins built his church smack-dab in the middle of what was supposed to be protected wetlands near some high-priced waterfront property.

“Well, that should be interesting. I haven’t seen Lisa Watkins since she sat behind me in Dramatic Lit class in high school. She was a skinny little thing back then. I always thought if she coughed too hard her sternum would crack,” I said.

“I don’t remember her, but I was a senior when you was a junior so that would make her a freshman. Us seniors didn’t have time to learn you lower classmen. We had toilets to blow up,” Walter said. I shook my head. A long-standing senior tradition at Queen County High School was leaving firecrackers in the toilets on the last day of school.

Gave a whole new meaning to going out with a bang.